This makes some sense, but to take a different example, I’ve followed a lot of the COVID debates in EA and EA-adjacent circles, and literally not once have I seen cluelessness brought up as a reason to be concerned
To be fair I would say that taking the cluelessness critique seriously is still quite fringe even within EA (my poll on Facebook provided some indication of this).
With an EA hat on I want us to sort out COVID because I think COVID is restricting our ability to do certain things that may be robustly good. With a non-EA hat on I want us to sort out COVID because lockdown is utterly boring (although it actually got me into EA and this forum a bit more which is good) and I don’t want my friends and family (or myself!) to be at risk of dying from it.
and this is a case where simply ignoring COVID efforts and getting on with your daily life (as best one can) is what most people have done, and certainly not something I would expect to leave people struggling with guilt or facing harsh critique from deontologists.
Most people have decided to obey lockdowns and be careful in how they interact with others, in order to save lives. In terms of EAs not doing more (e.g. donating money) I think this comes down to the regular argument of COVID not being that neglected and that there are probably better ways to do good. In terms of saving lives, I think deontologists require you to save a drowning child in front of you, but I’m not actually sure how far that obligation extends temporally/spatially.
As Greaves herself notes, such situations are ubiquitous, and the fact that cluelessness worries are only being felt in a very small subset of the situations should lead to a certain degree of skepticism that they are in fact what is really going on.
This is interesting and slightly difficult to think about. I think that when I encounter decisions in non-EA-life that I am complexly clueless about, that I let my personal gut feeling takes over. This doesn’t feel acceptable in EA situations because, well, EA is all about not letting personal gut feelings take over. So I guess this is my tentative answer to Greaves’ question.
To be fair I would say that taking the cluelessness critique seriously is still quite fringe even within EA (my poll on Facebook provided some indication of this).
With an EA hat on I want us to sort out COVID because I think COVID is restricting our ability to do certain things that may be robustly good. With a non-EA hat on I want us to sort out COVID because lockdown is utterly boring (although it actually got me into EA and this forum a bit more which is good) and I don’t want my friends and family (or myself!) to be at risk of dying from it.
Most people have decided to obey lockdowns and be careful in how they interact with others, in order to save lives. In terms of EAs not doing more (e.g. donating money) I think this comes down to the regular argument of COVID not being that neglected and that there are probably better ways to do good. In terms of saving lives, I think deontologists require you to save a drowning child in front of you, but I’m not actually sure how far that obligation extends temporally/spatially.
This is interesting and slightly difficult to think about. I think that when I encounter decisions in non-EA-life that I am complexly clueless about, that I let my personal gut feeling takes over. This doesn’t feel acceptable in EA situations because, well, EA is all about not letting personal gut feelings take over. So I guess this is my tentative answer to Greaves’ question.